Image: Raffaele Diomede | Flickr

The pastor’s office is a time-honored tradition whose moment has come and gone for a lot of us.

Over the last 35-plus years of ministry, I have spent thousands of hours in my office. Joyful, frustrating, heartbreaking, boring, wonderful, life-changing hours. Hours spent ...

Image: Art Poskanzer | Flickr

Yesterday, I was back in my home church after being gone for a month doing conferences and taking some vacation time with my wife, Shelley.

We’ve taken time away before, of course, but this time it was different. Because when I came back yesterday, for the first Sunday ...

Image: Joel Kramer | Flickr

Small churches can have a big impact.

Especially today, with the power of social media and other new ways of communicating.

But also, because so much of our lives are lived online, people are having a renewed longing for more personal, tactile, face-to-face experiences. These ...

Image: Knar Bedian | Flickr

Imagine a hallway full of doors, all of which lead to the same destination.

All your life, you’ve seen people go through one particular door, so you use it, too. But one day you try to go through that door and it won’t open for you.

What do you do?

Insistence says, ...

Leading a church is often a lesson in managing and overcoming frustration. Hopefully not all the time. But there are those seasons...

This week I’ve learned a great lesson about triumphing over extreme difficulty and frustration from a very unlikely source – a hotel ...

(Today, Billy Graham went to be with Jesus. I wrote this article three years ago. I repost it here now as my tribute to the man and his legacy.)

Most of us have never known a world without Billy Graham.

Graham came to international prominence in the historic Los Angeles Crusade ...

Image: tableatny | Flickr

God’s timing is perfect.

When he does something in our lives unilaterally (as in, he doesn’t ask for our permission or cooperation) his timing is often quick, surprising and sometimes painful. It’s only when we see those events in the rear view mirror that we ...

Image: Anisa Wood | Flickr

For many generations, people who went to church would attend every Sunday no matter what. Whether out of habit, culture, tradition, denominational identity, fear of reprisal, or a sincere commitment to Christ and his church, when the doors were open, they were going to walk ...

Image: Oklahoma Christian University | Flickr

As I talk with pastors and other church leaders, one question that pops up regularly is “it’s getting harder to get people to lead and/or attend our Sunday School classes (or Sunday night services, or prayer meetings, or VBS, or…). How do we fix this problem, ...